Friday, July 13, 2007

Kerala Chief Minister's fake profiles in Orkut.com

Cyber Police have received a number of complaints against social networking sites like Orkut that’s teeming with fake profiles of women and Ministers of Sate.

In a recent development, the State Police have requested ‘Google’ to provide the IP address and other details of fake profile creators. This will stop cyber crimes to a great extent. Fake profiles inviting the company of women have been the major attraction in Orkut recently.

The first complaint registered by the Police was from Adarsh, a web developer in Kochi. He found that another profile has been created with his name, photograph and phone number. The issue became grave when he found that the other person has been posting obscene pictures and messages in this profile. The Police was successful in tracing the culprit.

There’s another group targeted by fake profile-makers - ministers. Profiles of Co-operation Minister G Sudhakaran - describing him as a friend and a man of eccentricities - are already in Orkut. This is in addition to a number of communities (groups of members on specific topics) on him.

While some of them merely give his personal profile, a few have gone to the extent of terming him a ‘lunatic’. Profiles of the Chief Minister are also available online.

Even though there has been a flood of Cyber Crimes, Police find it difficult to deal with them as only a few complaints come under the Information Technology (IT) Act. ‘‘Section 65 of the IT Act identifies hacking as a crime. In Section 66, unauthorised access is a crime and Section 67 identifies exhibition of pornographic materials as a crime.